VALLEY HOUSE – ADDITION

VALLEY HOUSE – ADDITION

While the owners of this classic 1970s era, Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired home in Mississauga, Ontario loved its warm, inviting feel, they felt it was time for some updating. Specifically, they wanted to revitalize the dining room, add an informal breakfast area with a balcony and add a state-of-the-art kitchen.

The challenge before us was to come up with a design that not only blended seamlessly with this modern home’s rich palette of stone and wood but would bring in more natural light to its wide floor plan. To achieve this, we extended the rhythm of the existing five skylights (which begin at the front door and extend to the dining room), by adding a new “linear skylight,” that straddles the wall of the updated dining room and the new kitchen/breakfast area. This design move created a naturally illuminated “ceremonial path” to the dining room for arriving guests.

On the exterior side of this addition, the dining and kitchen walls are shown as two flagstone clad walls separated by an indented vertical window, thereby limiting views (north) so as to maintain privacy from the neighbour’s house, whose proximity is rather close.

This rich palette of stone and wood, combined with radiant heated limestone floors in the kitchen, cabinetry made from “Wenge” and “Imbuia” woods and countertops of dark green “Ubatuba” granite, allows this addition to perfectly blend with the existing house, as if it had always been there.

LOCATION: Mississauga, Ontario

ARCHITECT: Fred Roman Architect
(original house)

ARCHITECT: LINEVISION Architects
(addition/renovation)

DESIGN LEADERSHIP: Michael Poitras,
Principal-in-Charge of Design

CLIENT: Withheld

STATISTICS:

  • No. of storeys: 2
  • Total floor area
    (addition/renovation):
    910 ft2 (84 m2)
  • Total floor area
    (after addition/renovation):
    10,650 ft2 (990 m2)

MATERIALS:

  • Limestone wall cladding
  • Spanish cedar wood windows & doors
  • Cedar shake roof
  • Cedar soffits
  • Copper flashing
  • Panga Panga hardwood floors
  • Limestone floors (honed)
  • Textured leather wall
    (dividing dining & kitchen)
  • Ipe wood decking

GENERAL PROGRAM:
(addition/renovation)

  • Dining room
  • Open concept kitchen/informal dining
  • Wood and glass balcony
  • Circular concrete koi pond
    (not built)

COST: $600,000 (addition/renovation)

COMPLETION: 2001